


to walk among giants

by MashpotatoeQueen5



Series: childhood living is (not) easy to do [5]
Category: Avatar: The Last Airbender
Genre: 100 Year War (Avatar TV), And he has a hard time, Anger, Angst, Angst and Hurt/Comfort, Angst with a Happy Ending, Badass Sokka (Avatar), Broken Families, But he's finding his way, Character Study, Child Abandonment, Child Soldiers, Childhood Trauma, Death (s), Emotional Baggage, Emotional Hurt, Everything is Beautiful and Everything Hurts, Families of Choice, Family, Fear, Found Family, Gen, Grief/Mourning, Growing Up, Growing into yourself, Growth, Hurt/Comfort, Loss of Innocence, Loss of Parent(s), Love, Minor Character Death, Minor Sokka/Suki, Mistakes, Near Death Experiences, Parallels, Post-100 Year War (Avatar TV), Pre 1, Pre-100 Year War (Avatar TV), Protective Sokka (Avatar), Self Confidence Issues, Self-Doubt, Self-Esteem Issues, Sokka (Avatar) Has Issues, Sokka (Avatar) Needs a Hug, Sokka (Avatar)-centric, Sokka Grows Up, Sokka really do just be this teenager trying to take care a bunch of other teenagers, THEY'RE ALL SO YOUNG, Team as Family, Teenagers, Teenagers Dealing With Shit, They all need so much therapy, War, World Travel, all of whom are severely traumatized
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2020-07-11
Updated: 2020-07-11
Packaged: 2021-03-05 06:21:57
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 7,529
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/25209895
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/MashpotatoeQueen5/pseuds/MashpotatoeQueen5
Summary: Let’s talk about Hakoda, who left.Let’s talk about Sokka, who was left behind.(This is a boy so defined by loss. )Sokka: A character study.
Relationships: Aang & Sokka (Avatar), Aang & Toph Beifong & Katara & Sokka & Suki & Zuko, Hakoda & Sokka (Avatar), Katara & Sokka (Avatar), Kya & Sokka (Avatar), Sokka & Suki (Avatar), Sokka & The Gaang (Avatar), Sokka & Zuko (Avatar), Toph Beifong & Sokka
Series: childhood living is (not) easy to do [5]
Series URL: https://archiveofourown.org/series/1802353
Comments: 64
Kudos: 324





	to walk among giants

Let’s talk about Sokka, who grows up in war. 

Sokka is seven, he is eight, he is nine. 

He tends to his sister, he does his chores, participates in the weapon training that Katara always complains about not being able to join. Sokka does all the things he’s supposed to do

And he listens. And he watches. He has always been a little bit older than his skin and bones, always a little more aware of the world around him than anybody wanted him to be. 

He notices the tension of the soldiers even as they smile and shoo him along. He notices hushed conversations his parents have late in the night when they think he’s sleeping. He notices the fear, the grief, the way their tiny village is straggling.

Small meals and cold nights: Sokka complains, grumbles, but he notices too much, the way his mother shivers when he comes to her asking for extra blankets and she gives him her own, the way his father goes tight around the eyes when he wants more food and the man can not provide.

Small things, little things: he picks up the details with his sharp eyes. Sokka stops asking, and learns to joke.

This is a boy who loves his mother with every ounce of affection he can carry in his small chest, which is no small amount. On late evenings he curls up by her side, listens as she whispers stories of the stars, about great warriors who climbed up into the universe in search of a wolf hiding on the moon. Fantastical things that he has a hard time believing, even now when he is at the age he is, that time where children are most prone to taking the truths people implant in their chests and growing around them.

But he loves her warmth, the shine in her eyes. Kya has a calm about her that even then Sokka desperately craves, his mind rushing and running and forever grabbing at information.

“I don’t _want_ to clean,” he murmurs, seven years old and petty and small. 

His mother takes his hands in hers and kisses his forehead, whispers with sparks in blue orbs so like his own, “Ah, but this is our stronghold, young warrior. We hold to our own. We’ll start with one step and then we’ll take another, and soon enough we’ll be done.”

“ _Fiiiiine._ I still don’t want to, though.”

She laughs, cups a warm hand around his cheek.

“We all take on burdens we don’t want sometimes, Sokka.”

Let’s talk about how Kya, how she meant it as a joke, something trivial, shared and forgotten. 

Let’s talk about how Sokka remembered.

Hakoda takes him fishing with the midnight sun, teaches him how to track and fight. It’s under his father’s gentle tutelage that he throws his first boomerang, under his father’s kind smile and warm laughter that he grows into himself, little by little, piece by piece.

It’s under Hakoda that Sokka learns to hate what’s been done to his people, learns to hate firebenders and all they implied, this slow crumbling destruction, this loss of culture, this hassle to survive. 

(Behaviors are learned. They are implanted in your chest and encouraged to grow or wither. They never come from nowhere.)

Kya dies, and the family mourns. Grief is such a fickle, fickle thing: it clings and weighs and makes you too big for your skin, too small for all the emotion lying heavy in your heart. We carry it in different ways, and Sokka- always a little too aware- watches his father carry it in silence, with eyes so tight and sad, with a broken smile meant to hide the ache. He watches his father touch with powerless hands all the things in this shattered stronghold that should have been alien in the face of such loss, that were, instead, all too familiar.

Let’s talk about Hakoda, who left.

Let’s talk about Sokka, who was left behind.

This is a boy so defined by loss. 

Sokka, who loses his mother, his father, his lover- who loses his home in bits and pieces until it lays in tatters. Who adds on years to his short life along with this weight on his shoulders and this desperation in his chest. Who wants so desperately to be grown.

His father tells him to take care of his sister, to take care of the tribe, as if this is something you can ask a thirteen year old child to do. And this little boy, he tries, he _tries,_ as he watches everyone leave him, older boys growing up and heading out to face a world of evil, until he is the only one. The last man standing.

He looks out onto this small patch of ice, these small broken remnants of a once great nation, and he names it a stronghold. He defends it as well as his small hands are able. He builds watchtowers and he builds walls. He goes out hunting and he brings back food, as meager as it may be. 

Small meals and cold nights: when Katara complains about being hungry, he slips her some of his stew, and ignores the tightness pulling around his eyes.

 _Provide, provide, provide,_ is carved into his little bones. _Protect, protect, protect_ is carved in larger.

Life has not treated this boy kindly. 

This is a truth. It echoes.

This is a boy who grows up in a war, in a village scrambling to survive. This is a boy who is eight, listening with too bright eyes as adults murmur in their despair. Who is nine, being told to _stay outside, stay outside, don’t go into your own home, take care of your sister_ , handed a sobbing, furious girl whose mittens are dyed red with blood. Who is thirteen, and being told he is too young to fight.

Behaviors are things implanted in your chest. Sokka learns that nothing is permanent, nothing stays, that the world takes and takes and takes. There is so much rage and so much grief in his little bones. 

His grandma whispers stories of great spirits looking down on them, watching over them. Katara watches with her eyes wide and her hands open, and he clenches his fists.

It’s supposed to be encouraging. It’s supposed to be a kindness. 

But Sokka wants no part in destiny if it means all these moments that break. He’d much rather fight for a future then have it written in stone.

Science and logic, things that the eye can see and measure and hold: Sokka takes them in and lets them rest heavy in his chest. Life being up to chance means you can prepare for it, face it head on. It means there is some approximation of hope that things might be okay, if you can tip the odds in your favour, if you have enough dumb luck. 

Build barricades and stand your ground. Find the things worth fighting for and _fight,_ because the question of import is not _whether_ a battle will come but _when._

This is a war. Everyone carries some sort of weight, in their own way. Sokka carries his in measuring it, in weighing it, in trying to make it something he can hold. He wants to store it in a fortress, lock it up tight. He wants to understand it, the tipping of the scales, and keep himself and his own _safe._

There is a rhythm to be found even during a war, even during a desperate bid for survival in a slowly crumbling kingdom. This is a boy who finds it and marks it, because even in its devastation at least it makes _sense._ Sokka will always take this slowly sinking ship over a single massive blow: leaks, at the very least, can be fixed.

Sokka, who has his comfort zones. Who made the remnants of the Southern Water Tribe his stronghold, who picked up the weight of their protection and settled it onto his young shoulders, who breathed in the small constants he could find and found himself in the ways they echoed.

But the curveball still comes, with a child dressed in colours of a nation that no longer exists, with a fluffy snot monster that knows how to fly, with his stronghold so suddenly under attack.

He was ready to take on a warship, this boy. He was ready to take it on all on his own. 

Sokka chooses his battles. He looks at his hands and knows they hold no great powers, and bears his weapons nonetheless.

 _(Provide, provide, provide,_ carved into little bones. _Protect, protect, protect-)_

It is Katara who picks every battle she comes across, who sees an injustice and faces it, no matter the odds. She is so loud with her emotions, this girl, her anger and her love and her grief. They burst out of her in an explosion of sound and light. 

There is so much strength hidden in the hollows of her bones, so much determination to make things right, one small step at the time. She could move mountains, Katara, with sheer perseverance, an ocean’s tide wearing away tall stone. This is a girl who ran away from danger only once in her short life, watched her world crumble around her, and refused to ever do so again. 

“We have to go after him,” she says. Her eyes are hardened. Her eyes are still so young.

And Sokka-

Sokka with his comfort zones, his strongholds, who took a vow to protect this village: he knows all too well he cannot perform miracles, that he can only do what little he can.

Sokka is not Katara. He will never be his sister, will never be an ocean, forever crashing against every towering cliffside. He picks his battles, chooses them out of the thousands that all scream in his ears.

But she needs him. Will need him. And he will never turn his back on her.

Sokka will never be an ocean. He is a river: wherever the sea may be, he follows.

He smiles. It pulls tight at his eyes.

“Are you going to keep talking, or are you coming with me?”

Let’s talk about children. How they fumble. How they carry their faults so long and so deep. How they grow into them, when the world pushes in too close and leaves nowhere to go but down, down down. 

Sokka was flawed. He was sexist, misogynistic. There was this truth implanted inside of him that he let sit in the palms of his hands and rot. There was this belief in his chest that his worth was somehow tied to his gender, that his skills and fighting prowess were somehow greater for it.

But let’s talk about flaws. About how children grow from them, how they pull themselves away from these poisoned truths and become better for it.

Sokka was flawed, but he learned: science and logic, things that the eye can see and measure and hold. This is the thing about this young man, this boy, this child. This is the truth. Sokka will listen to your lessons, if you give him a reason to. Sokka will recalibrate, if you point out the flaws in his logic, the pitfalls of his own mind.

Sokka will change, if you let him. And he will change for the better. 

This is a boy who looked down on femininity and then wore women’s armour with pride. This is a boy who scoffed at fun and then took an aching child and played games with him until he smiled. This is a boy who painted the world in cynicism and learned to hope.

(Jet looks at him, a child turned soldier who can only see the red of the robes and not the people wearing them. He has so much hatred curled in the palms of his hand, and he offers this twisted vision of justice without flinching.)

(Sokka looks at him and feels sick, but only because he knows how easily this could have been _him,_ in another life, another time. The war drags on and on and on and it does not treat its children kindly.) 

Sokka talks too much and is brash and sullen and insecure, leaping to conclusions. He’s nitpicky, and anxious, immature and at times insensitive. He keeps his cards close to his chest, takes so long to trust and longer to love.

But life has not treated him kindly, this boy. We learn the things we are taught, the things we need to survive. We keep the ones we need to live. 

Let’s talk about Sokka, who walks among giants. This is a boy who feels he holds no power in the palms of his hands. Who feels like a bug even when he stands tall. 

Prodigies and behemoths: benders of great magnitude, of great skill. The elements move to their wills, nature bowing to their small palms. Sokka watches these warriors command oceans. He watches them breathe out tornadoes. He watches them stomp their feet and form earthquakes. Wildfire blazes from open palms.

Sokka stands behind them, besides them. In front. He holds his strategies and his maps, takes stock of their supplies. He watches these warriors as they become gods, commands them and directs them and sets them loose on the world.

A commander. A chief. A warrior. Sokka stands above a field and sees a chessboard. His mind rushes and runs and collects information, spills out strategies and tactics and battle plans. 

But here’s the thing, _here’s the thing-_

The gods are only children.

Katara is motherly, but she is not a mother. Sokka is immature, but he _is_ an older brother. His young shoulders ask and ask for weight. He wants so badly to be grown.

This is Sokka, during the war. He travels the world and makes his own self a stronghold, inviting these young souls to hide inside. Hotheaded children, brash and desperate and afraid. _Traumatized_ children, all falling under his wing.

He wants to be their shield. He wants to be their sword. He wants so badly to protect them from this world that is not fair, to keep them from these battles he knows they have to face. He wants so badly to have a sense of order, construction, a sense of control over what he can and cannot lose.

It is Sokka who says _wait,_ who says _pull back._ Who checks his schedules and checks his maps and tries to keep some semblance of a whole. He holds onto his own, starts with one step and then another, and hopes and hopes and hopes that soon enough they will be done.

Sokka never pleads to the spirits. He doesn’t believe in fate, in divine intervention, in destiny. But, sometimes, he looks up at the moon and allows himself to feel small. 

Let’s talk about Sokka, about the moon.

No. Let’s talk about _Yue_ , who looked at him like he was something special. This brave, strong girl, who was beautiful, who was kind. She used to build castles in the snow, and snorted when she laughed too hard, and could never quite manage to eat sea prunes without dripping on her chin.

Yue watches her nation build its strongholds, watches a war-torn world try to seep its way inside, and holds herself steady. She breathes, all the days of her long, short life, and is grateful for every last one of them. Yue is sixteen, she is nine, she is no more than a babe, and already the proclamation of _provide, provide, provide_ is being carved into her little bones. Already every fiber of her being is singing _protect, protect, protect-_

Let’s talk about Yue, who is so quick to be forgotten. This girl who was ready to marry without love for the sake of her tribe, this girl who was willing to die for it.

(Let’s talk about Sokka, who was left behind.)

Yue leaves him with the memory of her eye scrunched up with laughter, with the ghost of a kiss on his lips and her lifeless body disappearing from his hands. She leaves him with something so heavy and cold inside of his chest, another person he has loved and been unable to protect.

Sokka leaves the North Pole and stays awake late at night, staring at nothing. He does not weep, not when he so desperately needs to feel strong, but he shakes.

He breathes. And when the morning comes, he smiles. The skin pulls tight around his eyes and nobody notices.

Toph reminds him so much of himself. He recognizes her shell, her deflections, the way the aches of her own existence fester inside of her where the light does not touch. 

_She’s_ small, this girl, no matter how much she doesn’t want to admit. She’s young, with a world ahead of her and so many roads yet untaken. Sokka wants to hold her, to keep her behind the walls of his stronghold and keep her _safe._

But he knows, he _knows_ this wouldn’t be fair, wouldn’t be taken as a sign of protection but as a sign of shame. He knows that she’s capable, this young girl with the power of giants curled up in her palms, that she could take him down in the blink of an eye. He knows that she’s going to go out and move mountains, that she does it every day. 

Sokka stays quiet. Admires her skills, her perseverance, her strength. Compliments her battle prowess and _means it,_ truly, even if some small part of him wishes she would never have to fight at all.

Sokka stays quiet, but it doesn’t stop everything inside of him feeling like it’s crumbling when he refits the armour of man to fit the frame of a child. Seeing Toph dressed in plated green makes him want to be sick.

These powerless hands: Sokka curls his fingers and pricks his skin with his nails, a smile still on his face.

(Aang almost dies. Aang _does_ die, and gets brought back. 

Sokka was not there to protect him. He presses his forehead against that young brow, wrinkled in pain even in unconsciousness, and tries to remember how to breathe.

“I’m sorry,” he whispers, “I’m so _sorry,”_ and his voice, it rasps.)

Let’s talk about this, about Sokka: the funny one, the comic relief, the butt end of every joke. Let’s talk about how he hides behind his sarcasm and his humour, how his heart pounds in the face of danger and he tries to lighten the mood with a voice that doesn’t shake.

He makes them laugh, because he has to, because _someone_ has to. He cannot bend the world to fit into their small hands, these kids who he keeps in his stronghold, but he can make them smile, or at least he can try.

Sokka, who takes young souls capable of moving mountains and whispers stories to them when they wake from nightmares, about brave warriors climbing up into the universe and immortalizing themselves in the stars. Sokka, who is always tired, but only because he stays awake long after the others have fallen asleep, keeping watch, shaking himself apart and putting everything back together in some semblance of a whole. Sokka, who is always hungry, but only because he keeps slipping portions onto the other’s plates, hiding the tightness around his eyes with a grin and melodramatic speeches.

(Aang laughs, his back a molten wound of half healed flesh. Toph grins, continues placing tiny ponytails in his scruff of hair, and Katara rolls her eyes and dutifully hands over small wires to keep the tufts in place.)

(Sokka watches. He aches.)

This is his stronghold, these children of whom he is trying so desperately to keep young. Sokka forgets his mother’s face, but never her words: _we hold to our own._

Who sees him? Who sees him? Who takes his still growing fingers and presses joy into them, gratefulness? Who watches the dams building inside his own veins and clears them, lets the river flow?

This is a boy so defined by loss. He aches with it, all over. It takes so much for him to love, truly and deeply, because there is so much terror in the fact that it will be taken away. Because so much has been taken away from him already.

Sokka clings to strongholds, to safe harbours. He clings to loved ones, because he knows what it is to lose. This is a boy who has spent all his life trying to protect and trying to provide, only to meet failure at every corner. 

His mother, his father, his village, Yue, Aang, Suki, his father again-

His shoulders ask and ask for weight, and there are a group of kids- terribly powerful, terribly capable, terribly _young_ kids- leaning on him, that he feels he must smile for, that he feels he cannot help.

Let’s talk about Sokka, who struggles so fiercely with letting other people be strong, but only because he so easily equates bravery with sacrifice, bravery with _loss._

Suki comes to him, looks at him steady. “I can handle myself,” she tells him, again and again and again. “You don’t need to worry so much.”

Science and logic: things that you can measure, things that you can hold. Suki has solemn sharp eyes that pick up the small things, the little things, and she will not let him walk alone, will not let him add her to his shoulders as another asked for burden. When he tries to sneak her food, she sneaks it right back, looks at him with this knowing gaze that holds him steady.

This, too, is a child not quite grown, who takes on responsibility after responsibility to rest heavy on the curve of her spine. She knows this weight, this aching realization that the people you are fighting with are so much younger than they should be, even if every last one of them is a warrior in their own right.

Maybe this is why they work: neither one of them will let the other take on themselves as another burden. 

(Maybe this is the tragedy: both of them see themselves as too old to be another burden to bear.)

And Sokka is a boy who wants so much to be grown, going hungry and going tired, taking step after step after step. 

Sokka holds conversations. He comforts. He makes sure the kids younger than him eat, makes sure they smile, does it with jokes and calculating eyes, with clever little powerless fingers made to hold. 

Aang’s solemn face looks up at him. His quiet grey eyes hold proclamations of a thousand ghosts, the demands of a world wrecked with grief and loss and rage. This small boy who cradles duty so heavily in the breadth of his palm.

 _Avatar,_ they all call him, paint is across his skin, and Sokka wants to scream right back _Child._ He has seen this boy laid low, small and pale against clean sheets. He has never put much merit in the idea of destiny.

He bites the word before it escapes, hides it under the curl of his tongue.

Logic and numbers and the weight of scales. They are all taking burdens they do not want. They are all taking burdens that they do not deserve. 

(But Sokka would take it, if he could. His shoulders ask and ask for the weight, all the responsibilities he cannot hold.)

Let’s talk about Sokka, about his hands that hold no power. How he hates them, _hates them,_ because it means he will never be able to accomplish the goal that means the most to him: keeping his family safe.

This boy, with his insecurities that stretch for miles and his fear entrenched so deep. Who smiles and jokes and frets over schedules, because somebody has to, and it may as well be him. The others busy themselves moving mountains. 

Let’s talk about Zuko, who is so like Katara in the way he carries his anger and his grief, so loud and so bright and so vibrant. Let’s talk about Zuko, who is so like Sokka, in the way he knows what it is to stand in your younger sibling’s shadow, to feel the light wash over them and never get to take part.

Sokka, the funny one, the comic relief, the butt end of every joke. Who walks through this life one step at a time, who is told first and foremost that his responsibility is to his sister, this girl who is an ocean, this girl who carries so much hope. He is told this by his father, by his grandmother, by his grandfather to be. 

There is a message in this. It echoes.

_Out of the two of you, she comes first._

These are shoulders that ask and ask for weight. So much of it is a labour of love, of care, because there is a part of him that agrees. But another part of him, the part he keeps quiet, keeps tucked up in his chest and curled under his tongue, wants so desperately to be recognized, wants so desperately to please.

 _(Provide provide, provide,_ written in little bones _. Protect, protect, protect-)_

Do you think they trade glances, sometimes, this boy with a scar and this boy who is a river? Just a moment of shared solitude between two young men who have spent so much of their lives living for other people, fighting for love and affection on an upstream path, straining and straining for something like approval. 

Do you think he gets jealous, sometimes, of this boy with a scar? Because Ozai was a monster, but Iroh was a gift. Iroh cared, so fiercely, so gently. He always put Zuko first, above any other, and maybe it wasn’t fair but every child _needs_ it, to feel there is at least one adult out there who is irrationally crazy about them. 

Zuko has Iroh. Zuko had his mother, once. 

Sokka, in his mind, has no one. 

His sister is an ocean. Sokka is a river. He follows.

“I don’t know how to protect them,” he whispers to Suki some dark night at the Western Air Temple. His hands shake, and his voice feels so, so small, even here where everything echoes. He does not weep.

“We’ll protect each other,” she whispers back, the white of her eyes catching the light of the dying fire.

_(Your father told me to protect you.)_

_(I have to do this.)_

Sokka doesn’t say that this is what he’s afraid of, this boy who struggles so much with letting others be strong, who equates strength so fiercely with sacrifice, but she curls closer to him nonetheless.

_(She’s gone, she’s gone-)_

This is not a boy who can afford to be kind to everyone he meets. He was given very little reason growing up to believe in the inherent goodness of human beings, was built up by his losses, by his quiet grief hidden with a smile. He has accepted the fact that this world is filled with ruin, carved the rubble into walls of iron, and made it his own. 

Sokka instills the war into his very being, fights like he is made for it, made to grasp onto his sword and boomerang and strategies. He chooses his battles and his loyalties and he looks at the world that has always knocked him down and belittled him and tells it _you can have the rest but not this, not them, not these precious parts of myself that I picked to be mine._

War has hardened him, and when he swings his sword he does not divert killing blows. He will fight for what he loves, will fight for _who_ he loves, and he will never turn his back on them when they need it.

(We learn the things we need to survive. We keep the ones we need to live.)

These hands that hold no bending, these hands that hold no power. Sokka looks at the crevices of his palms and he _hates_ them.

This ridiculous, young, brave boy.

He forms strongholds and has no idea what it means to these child gods that he lets them inside. These are kids who are hardly grown, who are brash and traumatized and so, so lost. They need a map, they need guidance, they need someone who is willing to make them smile, willing to look past the painted labels written across their skin. 

(It should not be this boy’s burden to bear, but this is war. They are all taking on burdens they do not deserve.)

Sokka’s hands will never hold the power of giants, but they are _his_ hands. They are his clever fingers connected to his clever mind. He cannot move mountains but he can make them, _will_ make them, _has_ made them, for the sake of his family, for the sake of his friends.

This child who puts himself in second place, who feels inferior and incapable and small. This child who is still a boy trying to be a man, who can be immature and insensitive and brash. He’s clumsy at times, gets distracted and sullen. He’s too old, sometimes, for his skin and bones, and sees far more than anybody wants him to. 

This is his war. He carries it. 

Sokka, with all his plans and all his graces, stands in front of an army and fumbles. Sokka, holding his emotions so tight in his chest, _smiles,_ because somebody has to. Sokka, who looks at his hands and sees powerlessness, who never realizes how much those around him rely on being able to fall back on those two calloused palms, on being able to be led, on being able to be held.

This ridiculous, young, brave boy.

(Let’s talk about Sokka, who feels inferior. Let’s talk about Sokka, who always, _always_ steps up when he thinks he is needed.)

Sokka is thirteen, he is fourteen, he is fifteen.

This is a boy who grows up in a war, hungry and scared and tired, forever expecting life to deliver another blow. He is hardened and insecure and desperate. He looks at his hands and sees no power.

Sokka makes strongholds. He chooses his battles, and fights with everything he’s got, because he knows all too well what it is to lose. 

He builds himself up, this boy, in spits and spurts and starts. He builds himself up with bouts of laughter and shared smiles, in the miracles he creates with his clever little fingers and his clever little mind. 

Sokka bows his head over maps, pages upon pages of strategies and tactics. Sokka stands tall in front of his child warriors, his child gods, and his words do not fumble and his hands do not shake. 

On the day of the comet, he holds council with children who will save the world, though he doesn’t know it, not yet. He looks at their faces, at their limbs that are still growing, the baby fat clinging to their cheeks, the smatterings of scars spread across their skin. 

He breathes. 

None of this is fair.

But he sits there, and he looks at these kids who still deserve so much time, and he realizes their eyes meet his own and hold steady, realizes that this is a look between equals, not those of first and second rate. 

This time, he’s not being left behind.

It’s the end of the world and all of them are scared and determined. It’s the end of the world and they are all in different boats, drifting out into a stormy sea.

He looks at his sister, and she looks back. _Stay safe,_ Katara’s eyes tell him, _please stay safe._ She doesn’t bother to ask aloud, because she knows that this isn’t a promise he can keep.

He realizes that every last one of them are just as worried about his own safety as he is any of theirs. Every last one of them is depending on him to help save the world, just as he is depending on them. 

There is a message in this. It echoes.

_We are together in this, in equilibrium. There is no second rate._

Sokka breathes. He takes his hands that hold not the power of giants but the power of his own self, and he does his best to press worth into the curl of his palms. 

Let’s talk about Sokka, who is so often untalked about. 

Sokka, who breaks his leg. Who hangs on the precipice of destruction, who could let go so easily and save himself, or at least try. Let’s talk about how he doesn’t, how he holds on and on and on, because this is what he _does:_ Sokka holds onto his own, clings so fiercely to the people he loves. 

He does not let go, not willingly, not ever. 

This is a boy who is so defined by loss, and it takes so much for him to trust, to love. Sokka with his powerless hands, spending all his life trying to hold onto people, to protect them, and always, always losing.

There is sweat dripping down his neck. There are enemies on all sides and his weapons are all gone. His leg is a mass of pain and fire, the _world_ is a mass of pain and fire. 

Somewhere, Aang is fighting a homicidal maniac intent on killing him. Somewhere, Katara and Zuko are fighting a child tragedy intent on killing them. Somewhere, Suki may already be dead. He can’t protect them.

At the edge of his fingertips, Toph begins to cry. She’s looking up at him. She cannot see him. She is hanging into nothingness and he can’t protect her, either. 

Sokka does not weep, not when he so desperately needs to feel strong, but he shakes. 

_Provide, provide, provide,_ is carved into his little bones. _Protect, protect, protect_ is carved in larger.

He breathes.

He does not let go, not until - in near impossible odds, in a miracle, in _something-_ safe harbour smashes right beneath them. But he knows, he _knows,_ without a doubt he would have fallen, if it came down to it. 

_(Today, destiny is our friend,_ Uncle Iroh had said. It was meant to be kindness, and Sokka had curled his fists.)

His leg is screaming, when they land, and his breath cuts sharp and hard in his throat. But Toph speaks, Toph _lives,_ and for just one moment Sokka closes his eyes and prays to every form of fate he does not believe in, calls _thank you_ in the rushing of his mind _. Thank you. Thank you._

Let’s talk about Sokka, who hangs over fire and death and destruction, over the edge of everything, and holds on. Let’s talk about Sokka, who finally gets to save someone, who finally gets to _win._

But more than that, _more than that,_ this is a boy who has carried so much weight, who has protected and provided and put himself in second place, has done so all his life. This is a boy who looked at his own hands and saw them as powerless, who struggled so much with measuring his own worth, who finally, finally gets to be saved.

Let’s talk about Sokka, who always gets left behind.

Let’s talk about Suki, who always comes _back._

Here’s the thing about rivers: they follow.

Here’s the thing about rivers: they _flow._

Rivers run a course through one set path, a singular destination, a singular goal. They bend and pour over the scope of the land, take the path of least resistance, on and on and on.

But this is the truth about rivers: the earth they wash over bends to their will, slowly but surely. Rivers are the makers of canyons, the harbingers of life. Rivers find their way to the sea, and the world follows after them, villages and cities and kingdoms. 

Freshwater. Energy. Sustenance. This is the place you build strongholds. This is the place you build a home.

(Sokka will never be an ocean, but a river is no bad thing to be.)

This is a story about children. About how they grow. 

This is the story of Sokka, who found himself second place and second rate, who found no power in the curls of his palms, who wanted so badly to be grown. He entered this war with his comfort zones, with his self built strongholds, entered this war with this hatred implanted in his chest.

But that’s the thing about wars. They end. 

(This is a story about Sokka, who lives to see it.)

He wakes up, sometimes, in the early mornings. Steps out into the sun and breathes it in, feels the warmth curl up somewhere deep within his soul. 

Aang occasionally hides up under his writing desk when the world presses in too close. The boy always crawls back out half an hour later and smiles at him, presses a kiss against his cheek and a fleeting hug against the curve of his spine, a word of encouragement echoing as he flees to whatever pressing Avatar duty he has to get to next. Sokka watches this kid restore balance to the world. He watches this kid smile, bounce up and down on his toes, and dance like a child.

Toph punches him gently and listens to his attempts at poetry. They go on long walks in the palace gardens, and on lazy afternoons he’s slowly teaching her to write, one letter at a time, watching as she masters the skill as she has mastered all others, with patience and perseverance. Sokka watches her laugh. He watches all her walls fall down.

Zuko chats with him between meetings and uprisings, passing ideas and concerns and arguments about the thematic meanings behind different pieces of literature back and forth, back and forth. In the rare moments when things go quiet around the palace, they sneak out through the back entrances and walk the streets in disguise, eating fireflakes and watching a traumatized nation begin to heal. Sokka walks these cobbled stones and feels no hate, no suspicion, no fear.

Katara presses healing hands over his leg, presses joy into his clever fingers, gratefulness. She smiles at him, a little tired but mostly full of light, and when the hour drips late they go out to watch the moon, to talk about their home that is slowly being built back up, about how it’s so much bigger than it once was, about how it feels so small now that they’ve seen the rest of the world.

(Her eyes are hardened. Her eyes are still young. Sokka looks at them and feels only gratified, not second rate.)

Suki comes to his bedroom and they curl up besides each other. They sleep. In the morning she brushes his hair and he applies her makeup, and they make faces at each other and laugh as the others sigh loudly at their antics over the breakfast table, or otherwise join in. Sokka watches her subtly tap her fingers in boredom while guarding the throne room, watches her take down threats that approach and feels no fear, watches the way her nose wrinkles in laughter when he spins her round and round in the closing dusk. He kisses her under the moon, and feels happy. 

Sokka watches them. He loves them, feels irrationally crazy about them. Sokka would make things that could move mountains for them, for these chosen few. He would make things to move entire oceans. He already has.

Family is not defined by the burdens you carry for other people, or by those you fear the most to lose. It is defined by love, the way you hold onto it. The way they hold onto it with you.

This is a truth. It echoes.

 _Hold to our own,_ his mother whispered once upon a time, _hold to our own,_ and Sokka has, and he will. This is not something you forget, it’s something you grow around. It’s something that gets to stay. 

This is a boy so defined by loss. There is this grief inside his chest, and he carries it. 

But let’s talk about Sokka, who started this journey so alone. He had a sister who always clashed with him, a grandmother who offered encouragement he could not believe, a crumbling village of a crumbling nation, his own two powerless hands.

And now he has this, he has _this-_

They wake up in the early mornings, six lost children who carry so many aches inside their chests, six lost children who saved the world. They go out to watch the sunrise, blood traitors and runaways, vagabonds and heroes, kindnesses and mercies and miracles all wrapped up into growing beings of scars and skin and bone.

They breathe it in.

They are on a hill, somewhere outside the palace. The world stretches green and growing before them, and Sokka watches the sun rise on a new era and feels some cold ache inside of him melt warm, letting the sound of his family chatting and laughing wash over him.

Every last one of them has changed, has grown. This is the thing that Sokka has learned about life: nothing is permanent, nothing stays, that the world takes and takes and takes. But you can win, too. Different does not mean broken. Different does not mean gone.

His shoulders have asked and asked for weight all his life. That morning, under that new dawn, he disassembles it, gets rid of it, places those heavy responsibilities on the dirt beneath him, breathing deep and breathing easy.

Then he takes off his shoes, smiles at the others- small and brilliant and _real-_ and shouts, “I’ll race yah!” before tearing down the hill. 

Aang and Toph squawk, and he hears them start off after him. Suki shouts about fairness as she follows moments later, Zuko and Katara’s laughter echoing behind them. The grass is cold beneath his feet. He thinks, just in that one small moment, he believes in destiny.

Let’s talk about him, this boy of science and logic, of all the things you can measure and all the things you can hold. This boy who is a river, who flows, who builds, who is finding his way. Let’s talk about these children turned gods, how they follow him, how they love him, too. 

(This is a story about a boy. His hands were never powerless.) 

Sokka has carried the war all his life. His shoulders have bowed heavy under his burdens, his responsibilities, his guilt. 

He breathes. The world around him is a flyaway of green and blue, a symphony of rushing wind and singing earth, children’s laughter climbing up into the universe to find its place amongst the stars.

Sokka has carried the war all his life. This is the morning he lets it go. 

Let’s talk about Sokka, after the war. Hakoda pulls him to his chest, holds him tightly, presses a kiss against his hair. There are tears in his father’s eyes, there are people cheering all around them, crying and laughing and raising their hands to the cloudless sky.

Wars end. Sometimes, they even feel like victory.

“Your mother,” his father whispers, so fiercely, so gently, so full of love, “would have been _so proud_ of you.” 

And Sokka thinks back, but not to battle strategies or tactics or the grip of a sword in his palm. He thinks back to the faults that grew inside his chest, how he pulled away from those poisoned truths and became better for it. He thinks back to the strongholds he has carved, the kindnesses he has reaped, the forgiveness he has given, both to this world wrecked with grief and rage and ruin, and to himself. 

He thinks to his family, scattered among the crowd. Smiling faces, small and calloused hands. Warriors and children in one, so many years left to grow, and all the time they have left to see it.

This boy who’s growing to be a man, but not yet, _not yet-_

He looks up at his father, who raised him, who left him behind and came back, again and again and again.

(Let’s talk about how wars end. A hundred years, a thousand, across a battlefield and inside your chest. They always, always end.)

Sokka looks up at him, he speaks. His voice holds the confidence of a thousand suns. There is so much power in the palms of his hands, so much _love_ running through his veins. This is not a stronghold that will break, not again. 

And if it does, he will rebuild it, one step at a time.

_Your mother would have been so proud of you._

(This is a boy who is so defined by loss. This is a boy who is so defined by what he’s _found.)_

“I know,” he says. There is a certainty in his voice, and it echoes. “I’m proud of me, too.”

And he smiles.

**Author's Note:**

> Massive kudos to my lovely beta, Synapse <3
> 
> Hope you all enjoyed.


End file.
